Hi Folks,

There is now a gopher server running at the International AVS 
Center's anonymous ftp site.  With a gopher client running
on your local machine, you can browse through the IAC's
module directories and files much easier than with standard
ftp.  The gopher system is complementary to the WAIS system,
which also has a server running at the IAC.  With gopher, you
can easily "poke around" the directories to see what is there.
WAIS is more appropriate when you know exactly what you're 
looking for, in which case an English language query will
provide a ranked list of documents in response.  Both WAIS and 
gopher system will retrieve documents for you to peruse on your 
local system.

From the gopher man page:
------------------------
The gopher client is used to talk to gopher servers.
The Internet Gopher is a distributed document delivery  ser-
vice.   It allows a neophyte user to access various types of
data residing on multiple hosts in a seamless fashion.  This
is  accomplished  by  presenting  the  user  a  hierarchical
arrangement of documents and by using a  client-server  com-
munications  model.  The Internet Gopher Server accepts sim-
ple queries, and responds by sending the client a document.

Obtaining gopher:
----------------
use anonymous ftp to grab the file 
boombox.micro.umn.edu(that's 134.84.132.2):
/pub/gopher/Unix/gopher1.03.tar.Z, then ucompress and untar
it, and follow the instructions in the README. 

Invoking gopher to access the ftp site:
--------------------------------------
gopher avs.ncsc.org 
	or
gopher 128.109.178.23

That's "gopher [host]"

Then go into the AVS_SITE subdirectories.

I recommend giving gopher a try - it is very intuitive to
use, and can be used to browse many resources on the Internet.

Take care, and have fun AVSing!

-Steve
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   Steve Thorpe, Application Visualization System Specialist
International AVS Center, North Carolina Supercomputing Center
PO Box 12889   3021 Cornwallis Rd, RTP, NC 27709   avs@ncsc.org
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